Over a century ago, a western Kentucky family organized a weeklong Christian Socialist convention in Graves County.
According to historian, author, and professor emeritus Berry Craig III, the Nance family of Viola – including Ed ‘Lafe’ and Phoebe – helped organize the August 1911 gathering where the crowd sat on planks and a large platform afforded room for the organ, choirs, speakers, and “a score of older comrades.”
Tthe week-long event, known as the Second Annual Summer Meeting of the Graves County, Kentucky Socialists, featured speakers from all over the country in a brush arbor revival format, including Rev. Edward Ellis Carr – the editor of the Christian Socialist, a national publication based out of Chicago – and Rev. Paul H. Castle, the socialist activist from Montana who led the event.
Carr would later write a story about the meeting in far western Kentucky. On the front page of the September 1911 edition of his publication Christian Socialist, he wrote that he had “hurled verbal dynamite” when he addressed the crowd and that Castle spoke in a “quiet and didactic” style.
It was also noted in Carr’s story that the attendees of the rally enjoyed a “communistic meal,” which Craig explains means that “[attendees] brought dinner baskets and invited all who were unprovided to eat with them in a fine woodland near the railroad station” in Viola. The meal included chicken, beef and mutton spread out on tablecloths on the ground.
In the evenings, the gathering moved to a nearby church and – despite objections from some in the community – they were allowed to hold events there for the duration of the convention.
Carr wrote that he had attended and covered the event “not only to honor in just measure the noble comrades who had worked so long and faithfully for socialism and Graves County, Kentucky, but to spread the news of their successful efforts in order that other comrades elsewhere might be inspired to emulate their excellent work.”
The Nance family, and most of those who attended, identified themselves as Christian Socialists, people who wanted to combine the fundamental aims of socialism with the religious and ethical convictions of Christianity. This economic and political philosophy was a popular movement that helped to propel leaders like Eugene V. Debs, who ran for president in 1912 under the Socialist Party banner.
According to Craig’s research, Lafe Nance credits his conversion to Socialism to Thomas Scopes of Paducah. Scopes’ son, John, is known for being a defendant in the Dayton, Tennessee, “monkey trial” in 1925, where he was convicted of breaking a state law that prohibited the teaching of evolution.
That conversion, Craig said, led to the Nance family supporting Debs’ presidential campaign because of their shared belief that “socialism was merely Christianity in action because it recognizes the equality in men.” Nance became an activist in his local community.
Records indicate that his organizing bore at least some fruit. While Graves County voted overwhelmingly for Democrat Woodrow Wilson, Mayfield Messenger article from November 1912 indicates Debs picked up 71 votes from the Pottsville and Viola communities.
“Can you imagine today 71 socialist votes cast in Graves County, Kentucky?” Berry said. “The Earth would be knocked off its axis.”
Craig said there is not much else documented about the life of the Nance family so far as their political activity. The only evidence of Grave County’s Socialist roots are the headstones of Ed and Phoebe Nance in the Pottsville Church of Christ Cemetery. His epitaph reads “A Christian Socialist” and hers simply “Christian Socialist.”
